Chapter 18
Tessa
“There’s still something he’s not telling me.”
My eyes dart to the stairs Remi just stormed up. Then I look at Jason Mancuso.
He’d shown up earlier, just as I got out of the shower.
Clem had taken off fifteen minutes prior, trying to avoid the boys who’d still been sleeping at the time.
As soon as I opened the door to the FBI agent, the rosy morning-afterglow Clem had left me with paled at the serious expression on Mancuso’s face.
He needed to talk to Remi and suggested I wake him up. I felt uneasy right away, which didn’t improve when I finally got my kid out of bed and downstairs, and the agent asked his first question.
How well did my son know Ryan Wells?
Remi insisted he only knew the dead boy from sight, but had never talked to him. Mancuso didn’t appear to believe him, his line of questioning suggested something made him think my son might be lying about a connection to Ryan.
He pushed Remi hard about the other boy, about the attack on him, and about his involvement with this gang. There were moments I was battling an internal struggle between the mom and the detective in me. At the same time I wanted to protect and defend my child, I also wanted answers.
Because I noticed my child’s body language, the way he reacted uncomfortably to the pressure the agent was putting on him. I saw the way he avoided eye contact with me, the way he’s always done when he tries to hide something from me.
Yeah. Hard as it is to admit, I have to agree with Mancuso.
Remi is holding something back.
“What brought this on?” I ask, even as I brace myself for the answer.
The thought my child might know more than he’s letting on about the brutal murder of Ryan Wells makes me sick to my stomach.
“This.”
Jason pulls up something on his phone and turns it around to show me. It’s a picture of a stained oil rag, folded open to reveal the dirty hunting knife it was hiding. The kind of knife the medical examiner believed to have been Ryan’s murder weapon.
My mouth goes dry as I try to process what I’m looking at, trying to put it in context.
“How…where…?”
“It was discovered wedged into the torn seat of a rusty old pickup truck in the auto shop.”
The nausea I was feeling is instantly replaced by indignant anger.
“It’s a setup,” I react promptly, my mind racing. “That knife was planted by whoever left the broken phone in the truck.”
Mancuso nods slowly before responding. “Perhaps. Or, it may have been placed there already. By your son.”
“Bullshit.”
“Hey, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t explore all possibilities.”
“You don’t really believe that, or you wouldn’t have hesitated confronting Remi with that picture, but you didn’t. You spared him that.”
Jason looks down at the tips of his shoes in a futile attempt to hide the faint grin on his face.
“A good reminder I’m dealing with a seasoned investigator,” he mutters, before lifting his head and following it up with, “Here’s what I think.
No attempt was made to hide the break-in last night, only the identity of the perp.
In fact, I would venture to suggest even the timing was intentional; they wanted the phone and even the knife discovered before there was any chance of your son finding it.
He might have hidden the discovery from law enforcement. They wanted us to know about it.”
“To what end? Throw you off the scent? Are you following a hot lead or something?”
“We’ve been pursuing something, putting a little pressure on a couple of Ryan’s school buddies.
It may have shaken something loose they’d like us to focus away from.
But I suspect this whole exercise was to scare Remi.
Prove to him how powerful they are, how easy it is to get to him, which suggests to me they perceive him to be a threat. ”
“That’s why you’re convinced he knows more,” I propose.
“Yes.”
“But then why—God, I can’t believe my mind is even going there,” I shake my head, trying to clear a mental image. “Why not…kill him? They’ve already killed two kids that we know of. Why bother beating Remi up or leaving him threats?”
Mancuso shrugs. “My guess is they’re already feeling the squeeze now that all the dots are being connected, and they’re dealing with the FBI and not the individual local authorities.
We know they’re watching, and they know we know they’re watching.
Trying to take out your son under our noses is too risky. ”
I rub my hands over my face, the topic of conversation getting to me, as I let his words filter through.
“But when Remi was attacked, we didn’t know the cases were connected yet,” I point out. “There was no FBI involvement.”
“True, but I’m guessing they may not have realized his mother was law enforcement. We picked up on something that could be just a curious coincidence, but it could also be a pattern of selection.”
When I raise a curious eyebrow, he continues.
“We’ve been looking for common denominators.
Searching for ways these boys’ lives have overlapped, run parallel, or intersected,” he explains.
“And one thing that jumped out is that both our known victims were from a single-mother household. So is Remi. If this is a pattern, it’s possible these specific boys were picked because there is no father in the picture.
No male influence in their lives, which could make those kids more susceptible to manipulation. ”
As much as I’d like to argue there is no difference between single moms raising their boys to two parents or a single father, the statistics prove otherwise. Boys like mine, regardless of how well I’m raising them, are at higher risk of engaging in criminal behavior.
“Clever,” I grudgingly admit.
“Yeah, deviously so. It implies a certain level of psychological intelligence. Discovering you are a cop, realizing you’d likely never stop looking for them if they killed your son, may have been enough of a deterrent.”
“Lucky me.”
I say it bitterly, because there are two other single mothers who are suffering with the loss of their sons. I could have easily been one of them.
“However,” Jason continues soberly. “Let’s not get complacent.
In fact, realizing we might be dealing with more than just a gang of juvenile delinquents convinces me we need to be more cautious.
This investigation is starting to heat up, and I think the information Remi is sitting on may be the catalyst.”
I already know what’s coming before he suggests it.
“With your permission, I’d like to take him with me. Place him somewhere safe, give me a better chance to build some trust with him, and maybe get him to talk. In addition, it would free up Stanton and Laliberté, and take pressure off you.”
I snort. It may take immediate pressure off me, but I already know the guilt will weigh just as heavily.
I don’t feel I have a choice though. Mancuso’s valid reasons trump my emotional dilemma.
“Okay. I’ll go help him pack.”
Clem
“If you could bring it by around noon, that’d be great.”
Hanging up the phone, I lean back in my chair, glancing over at the remaining agents still milling about the shop, occasionally brushing that damn fingerprint powder on a surface.
They said they were finishing up, but I’m sure it’ll take me a while to clean up after them. Which is why I already notified Kyle and Manuel to stay home, and have been trying to reschedule customers to tomorrow or Monday.
I allow myself a moment to think about last night with Tessa. It puts an immediate smile on my face. What an amazing woman she is. Gives as good as she gets in every possible way, and it was good last night.
Very good.
Her body is like a fucking dream. Soft, generous, and unapologetically responsive. But also very real, and she made no attempt to hide anything. It made me forget any hesitations I might have had exposing my imperfections. She didn’t seem to care.
The fact I was a little quick on the trigger didn’t even faze her, because she was right there with me.
Going off like fireworks at the same fucking time.
Not only that, but she was right alongside me, lazily exploring our way into round two, which left me feeling drained in a way I hadn’t been in forever.
Even the simple act of sleeping with this woman in my arms was a fantastic experience. I look forward to the day when we can wake up and can take our time, rather than scramble to get up and out before her boys wake up.
“Can you sign this receipt for the seat we took out?”
“Sure.”
I wave the guy into my office and glance over the paper he hands me before signing on the dotted line.
A few agents had been removing the rear bench seat from the Chevy when I got here this morning. According to Jason Mancuso, who’d been watching them do it, they’d found some additional evidence and wanted to take the seat to the lab.
“Does that mean you’re done?” I ask the young agent.
“Yes, sir. We’ll be out of your hair in a few minutes.”
I haven’t even been upstairs yet, and almost dread finding the black dust covering everything up there as well. It’s going to be a bitch to clean.
Fifteen minutes later, I watch the last of the FBI vehicles drive away. About to head upstairs to check out the damage done up there, I notice a pickup with a Gaines Construction logo on the door pull into the lot.
Nate Gaines is a local contractor and married to Savvy Colter, our sheriff.
“Surprised to see you out and about,” I call when he gets out of the truck.
“Was back at work after two weeks.”